


Old Wounds

by Tasceri



Series: Extended Universe [6]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon compliant up to DDD, Gen, M/M, Minor descriptions of injury and infection, Roxas is Ventus, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 22:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17734013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tasceri/pseuds/Tasceri
Summary: Follow up to Fractured Hearts. Riku dreams of a boy with an uncanny resemblance to Sora.





	Old Wounds

In the dream, Vanitas is lying on the floor between the sleeping images of himself and his other half, absent-mindedly drumming his fingers on the stained glass. When Riku appears he catches him with his violent eyes, watching him suspiciously as if expecting his form to waver.  
  
"So you came back," he says. Riku crosses the gap between them and finds a panel of glass which isn't shattered to sit down on, Vanitas' eyes following him as he moves.  
  
"I guess I did."  
  
It's been a while. Riku had been wondering if he'd stopped dreaming of Vanitas, if maybe the connection between their hearts had been severed. But he's here again, the fringes of his vision fading and curling, time feeling both insubstantial and syrupy, the boy who looks so much like Sora watching him closely as if he might suddenly disappear.  
  
"I was getting lonely without you," says Vanitas, the sarcasm in his voice edged by something that could almost be genuine.  
  
"Still no sign of Ventus, then?"  
  
"If there was, you'd be the first to know." Vanitas drums on the glass again, then suddenly balls his hand into a fist and punches it, hard. The facet cracks, beads of bright light bleeding through. "It's not like there's anyone else around here to talk to."  
  
Riku pulls a hand through his hair. It's shorter here, in the dream, the lowest tips just brushing against his upturned collar. He's glad he let Kairi cut it. It had been too long.  
  
"Maybe he's gone forever," Vanitas continues, just as Riku opens his mouth to speak. "Serves him right for-!" but he catches himself. Rolls onto his side, curling up. The dream seems to loop into Riku's memory. "We were never supposed to be separated. Why didn't he understand that?" Riku anticipates Vanitas' words, almost able to mouth them this dream has repeated itself so many times. "Of course he wouldn't want me back. Who wouldn't want the opportunity to leave all their pain and fear behind."  
  
Riku reaches out, the dream fragmenting, his fingertips brushing against the leathery fabric stretched taut across Vanitas' shoulder. In some dreams he lashes out, keyblade snapping from his wrist; in others he curls more tightly into himself, unable to bear the agony of separation from his lighter half. In this dream he remains still, vacant, as if his energy has all been lost in this sleeping realm. Cautiously Riku rests the back of his hand against the boy, stroking his arm in a slow motion so as not to startle him.  
  
He finds himself wishing he could be Sora, words of comfort coming easily, knowing just what to do to make Vanitas feel better. Sora could crack one of those beautiful sincere smiles of his and pull Vanitas out of his misery. Sora probably would have saved him by now.  
  
But it isn't Sora who dreams of Vanitas, even though it's his heart playing host to the boy. It's Riku, and Riku doesn't know what to say, and even if he did, he probably wouldn't sound genuine anyway. So he awkwardly strokes Vanitas' arm, feeling him quiver and listening to him hiccup like he's trying not to cry. Only for a few minutes, or maybe for hours, until finally Vanitas speaks, turning a dreamlike haze into something almost like a memory.  
  
"Sometimes I think I could be like you."  
  
Riku instinctively draws his hand away as Vanitas moves, reflexes bringing his keyblade to the precipice of existence. But Vanitas just rolls over onto his back again. His face is scrunched up, eyes red.  
  
"You messed up. You _really_ messed up." His voice takes on a snide tone; for a moment Riku thinks his lips are going to twist into a grin.  
  
"I'm atoning for what I did," he replies, repeating the same line he murmured to himself like a mantra for so long. He doesn't think he'll ever be done making up for the hurt he inflicted on his friends, his world, countless lives. Master Aqua told him a little of what Vanitas had done, all those years ago when Riku was just a little boy, never dreaming of the incredible things he would see and terrible crimes he would commit. The creatures they called Unversed, Master Xehanort and the masked boy who thought nothing of murder. Riku longs to ask her more, to understand the heart that reached out for him through the darkness, but the grief in Master Aqua's eyes curbs his curiosity.  
  
The last time they spoke, she cupped his cheek in her hand, tears prickling at her eyes, then excused herself with a few apologetic words. Riku reminds her too much of someone special lost to the darkness.  
  
Vanitas watches Riku, a kind of thoughtfulness in his wild yellow eyes. Riku forces himself not to look away. Eye contact is still hard for him, even in dreams. Then the other boy sits up, pulling his knees close to his chest. He stares out into the endless blackness around them.  
  
"I didn't have a choice," he says. "But I wanted them to suffer." He scratches his arms, the thick material twisting and warping. "I wanted to make them understand what my existence was." And then: "He had his friends. They loved him so much." His voice cracking, his form wavering with tendrils of darkness weeping from him like ugly, desperate tears. "All I had was the promise that if I killed him I could finally stop existing." He screams, fists pulling at his hair, body shaking, the sound reverberating as if coming not from his body but the air itself, the glass splintering and breaking, darkness bleeding from every cracked panel. Riku feels himself become weightless, feels his consciousness withdrawing, the dream fragmenting like the glass. But suddenly Vanitas moves, his hand clutching at Riku's wrist, even as he falls from the sleeping realm.  
  
"Don't leave me," he begs. Riku smells the tang of blood. "Don't leave me here." The desperation in Vanitas' eyes hurts him. " _Please-!_ "  
  
Riku wakes in a cold sweat, breathless, his skin crawling. For a second the dark silhouettes in his bedroom loom menacingly. He gulps in air, untangling himself from the sweat-stained sheets, fumbling for the light switch. He stands still in the middle of his room for a few moments, reorienting himself, focusing on the cadence of his breath. The dream is already slipping from his memories. He digs around for the journal and scrawls everything he can remember on a fresh page, the red stain of a bruise forming around his wrist as he writes.  
  
The first rays of morning light are breaking across the horizon. Riku rinses his face, performs a few stretches, pulls back the curtains and cracks open the window to let some air into the room. His mind returns, back and back again, to Vanitas. Trapped, alone, afraid.  
  
Eventually he gives in and cuts across the corridor to Sora's room.  
  
"Hey Riku." Sora is yawning, but his eyes are already bright and alert. "It can't be time for breakfast already?"  
  
"I dreamed of him again."  
  
They leave the castle, the stone path to the gate cold on the soles of their feet.  
  
"So, we still don't know where Ventus' heart could be," Sora says, touching his own chest briefly. "Or why he left."  
  
Riku flicks through his dream journal. "Vanitas isn't sure of the exact sequence of events, but he thinks Ventus disappeared after Kairi, but before we were reunited. But he only saw Kairi a few times, even though she was inside your heart for a while."  
  
"So you're saying Ventus could still be here, just... avoiding Vanitas?"  
  
They step onto a stretch of grass, where the early morning sunlight is wicking dew from the ground in a thin stream of mist. Sora picks up a stray windfallen apple from a nearby tree, tossing it in the air. Always in motion. More restless lately, with the toll his abduction by Xehanort took on his body.  
  
"It's possible. There was something else he said. Something new."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"He said... he said, don't leave me." Riku realises he's biting at the inside of his lip. An old habit he thought he'd dropped a long time ago. "He sounded so desperate."  
  
"You think he's scared?"  
  
Riku murmurs, "Wouldn't you be?" He catches a sadness in Sora's eyes, fleeting, quickly disguised by a smile and a short laugh of agreement.  
  
"Even if they're both in here," Sora says after a long silence, "How do we get them out?"  
  
"There's the Keyblade of Heart," Riku suggests, tone slipping into well-practiced self depreciation. "Because, you know, that worked so well the first time." He forces himself to laugh, even though the memory still burns. Sora laughs too, sounding more genuine. Always more genuine.  
  
"Hey, it could work. We've already got at least one Princess on our side, right?"  
  
They walk on, distracted by their own thoughts. Riku remembers Vanitas' hauntingly familiar face, those wild agonised eyes. He says, "Do you really think I can help him?"  
  
Sora smiles at him, so genuine. Darkness, Riku was in love with that smile for so many years.  
  
"If anyone can, it's you."  
  


* * *

  
Vanitas is calmer in this dream, something almost like amusement in his expression as he watches Riku cross the glass panels to sit by him. His eyes flicker across Riku's body, back to his face, holding him with that piercing expression which is welcome and uncomfortable at once.  
  
Once Riku's settled down with his legs hanging over the infinite fall, Vanitas says out at the darkness, "I could turn my pain into monsters. Did Aqua tell you that?" Before Riku has a chance to respond he says, "I can't do it here though. I guess I don't exist enough to have that kind of power." He traces the red lines in the uncanny fabric of his suit with one gloved finger. "The more negative emotions I felt the stronger I was. That was why he hurt me."  
  
"Xehanort?"  
  
It might just be his eyes playing tricks, but Riku thinks Vanitas flinches at the name. A scowl comes over his pale, haunted face.  
  
"It's Ventus' fault. _I_ was strong enough." He spits his other half's name like venom. "But he couldn't handle even a fraction of the pain and rage I felt. And now I'm stuck here."  
  
Riku remembers thinking Sora was weak. When in reality he had a strength Riku could only dream of. He doesn't know how to tell Vanitas this though, not without angering the strange boy. Instead he says, "We think we know how to free your heart from Sora."  
  
"And then what?" asks Vanitas.  
  
"Yeah, that's where it gets complicated."  
  
They share the silence for minutes, hours, a single fleeting moment. Then Vanitas says, as if continuing a conversation, "I didn't look like this when I was created." He touches his face, experimentally, as if it doesn't belong to him. "What do you think you'll gain from pretending to be a person." Then he laughs, the sound unnatural. Like he doesn't know the difference between laughing and crying.  
  
Riku wonders if he talks to himself like this when he's alone too.  
  
"What did it feel like?" Vanitas asks suddenly. Turning his focus to Riku again.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"The suit. When you became the darkness."  
  
"I..." Riku struggles to recall. He had other things to worry about at the time. "I don't know. My body didn't really feel like it was mine. Then it wasn't."  
  
"I've never worn anything else," says Vanitas, looking at Riku's bare arms. Riku feels his skin prickle. Vanitas pulls at his sleeve, testing the give in the unnatural material, an action - a ritual - he's performed many times in these dreams. Then unexpectedly he reaches for the back of his neck, groping around for the concealed zipper, splicing the material to reveal gaunt, pale skin stretched taut over tense muscle and a protruding spine. As if someone had taken Sora and sucked all the life out of him.  
  
That's the worst part of it, somehow, that this wretched creature is a twisted mirror image of the boy Riku loved so much for so long.  
  
Vanitas says, conversationally, pulling the suit from his shoulders, "I didn't look like this when I fought him, either." Laced across his body are faint pink scars, ragged from neglect. Strangely hazy, as though the bitter wounds don't quite exist in this sleeping world.  
  
"What did you look like?" Riku asks, in spite of himself. Vanitas frees his hand from his glove, presses his fingers against his skin as if his body is alien to him.  
  
"Bad," he says. He looks away. His shoulders hunch. "Worse." But then he sits back, tipping his head up and emitting a long, low sigh. "But nothing my Master did to me was anything compared to being apart from him." Riku watches the tears drip in slow motion down his cheeks, feeling strangely detatched, as if he's watching the boy on a digital screen. Always so far away from the people he cares about. Physically, emotionally.  
  
He says cautiously, after minutes, hours, days, "Maybe... maybe when we get you out of Sora's heart you'll be together again."  
  
Silence for a long time. Then Vanitas says, "If we're together again... will he share my memories?" He sounds almost concerned.  
  
"I don't know," Riku replies, honestly. The boy glances at him, an expression Riku hasn't seen before on his metal-framed face. Strangely earnest. Vulnerable.  
  
"Maybe that's why he's hiding from me," he murmurs. Riku wakes feeling disoriented, the dream reduced to fragments, tears prickling at his eyes.  
  


* * *

  
King Mickey says, "I'm real proud of you, Riku."  
  
Riku still can't take a compliment, especially one from someone so powerful - and so earnest - as the Mouse King. He rubs his bare arms, coughs a little, and pretends he didn't hear anything. Gazes out across the cheerful palace garden with its exaggerated topiaries and always-blooming flowers. Riku doesn't think he'll ever feel anything other than out of place in Disney Town, least of all because he isn't an anthropomorphic animal.  
  
"Their pain will be mended when you return to end it," Mickey quotes, a line now familiar to Riku. "I reckon there's more truth to that than even Naminé knew when she wrote in that journal."  
  
Riku looks at his dream diary, reading the last entry over for the dozenth time. Although he only remembers fragments of his conversation with Vanitas, the boy's feelings - of anguish, of hatred, of _loneliness_ \- burn so fiercely he could have experienced them himself.  
  
Perhaps reuiniting with his heart's other half would dull some of that pain, but for Ventus it would be a whole new burden. The pain certainly wouldn't be mended. Riku knows better than anyone that nothing can truly erase the smear of Darkness from a heart once it has been corrupted by it.  
  
He says, "If we go ahead with our plan, will Ventus and Vanitas be..." he falters, searching for the right word, "Reunited? Aqua wants to return his heart to his body. But…if that means returning Vanitas too…Ventus won't be the person she knew."  
  
 "I sure wish I knew," Mickey laments. He holds out his hands as if holding two pieces of a broken heart. "Their hearts have been separated for a long time now. They might be too different to go back to being one person again."  
  
Riku follows the swooping motions of a flock of birds crossing the sky. Moving as one, yet many. "And then what?" But King Mickey doesn't know. None of them do.  
  


* * *

  
Out of the blue, Vanitas says, "You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen."  
  
They had been talking about Ventus - the boy's name comes up in almost all of Riku's dreams of his darker half -  when Vanitas suddenly fell silent, watching Riku with his piercing eyes, so fiercely that Riku felt colour rise to his cheeks even before Vanitas spoke again.  
  
Riku glances away shyly. He's been complimented on his looks before, but this is different. Maybe it's the way Vanitas looks at him. Almost… surprised, as if he can hardly believe what he's seeing.  
  
Riku mumbles, "Thanks, I guess."  
  
Vanitas is still staring at him, his expression almost longing. Tremulously, he lifts one gloved hand to Riku's face. Riku flinches, but not at the contact: the faint scent of blood and decay makes him wince. Vanitas doesn't seem to notice. He's staring directly at Riku but there's also something faraway in his eyes. He chews on his lip. Presses his fingers against Riku's cheek. Leans closer. Riku wants to move away, but he can't, but he doesn't want to.  
  
He reaches up to touch the back of Vanitas' hand and the other boy pulls away sharply, recoiling as if anticipating pain. He recedes to the other side of the stained glass circle, sulking. For a few minutes, or maybe for hours. Riku wonders if he'll wake. He wonders how much of the dream he'll remember; they fragment so easily, like the fragile splinters of frost on a cool morning. He wonders how many he's forgotten entirely.  
  
Finally, after a long emptiness, Vanitas asks in a voice full of trepidation, "Did you know you'd return? From the darkness. From evil." He turns away from the endless night to gaze at Riku again.  
  
"Not for a long time," says Riku honestly. "I mean..." Saying so out loud is like forcing every last breath of air from his lungs, but he forces himself to continue. "For a long time I wasn't even trying to be good again. I thought I was too far gone for redemption." Sadness wells up in his throat. Sadness for the boy he was, lost in the darkness, driven only by fear and guilt. "I just wanted to protect Sora."  
  
"Sora," Vanitas echoes thoughtfully. Then, unexpectedly, he adds: "You loved him."    
  
"Yeah," whispers Riku. He realises he's never admitted it out loud before.  
  
"Ventus saw him all the time," says Vanitas conversationally, evidently missing the gravitas of the moment. "He talked about him. Dumb things. Sora Sora Sora, waving around his Keyblade with no idea what Keyblades are really made for, saving people from the Heartless." His voice takes on a sing-song tone, his snide derision all too familiar to Riku.  
  
Why had it even mattered so much? It wasn't like Riku even knew what a Keyblade was until their world was swallowed. But Sora _had_ it, and Riku _didn't_ , and that meant he wanted it. Every destructive thing Riku ever did came down to rash, childish jealousy.  
  
He opens his mouth to say something, but Vanitas interrupts him: "But I always saw you." He shuffles a little closer. He reminds Riku so much of a wild animal, all nerves and tension. Those desperate eyes. "I guess it says something about how close your heart is to Sora's that I could feel you at all."  
  
Without really realising it, Riku raises a hand to his chest. Even now he can hardly believe that all that time Sora kept caring about him, in spite of everything.  
  


* * *

  
The castle is eerily quiet, no echoes to sound despite the hard marble architecture. Riku feels nauseous; a hard lump ties up his throat. His mind and body remembering this place, the evil he saw here, the evil he committed.  
  
Sora is crying. His shoulders shake as he follows Aqua into the secret room. He wipes his face on his glove, not that it makes any difference. Aqua leads them to Ventus, his body slumped forward as he just dozed off minutes ago but so still, a frozen image caught between life and death. His face hidden by a fringe of blonde hair.  
  
Riku is intruding into this sacred space. He keeps close to the door, his skin crawling as Sora approaches the sleeping boy. He feels fear, loathing, longing; he coughs acidic bile in the back of his throat. There are too many memories in this room, memories from Castle Oblivion and others he can't place. A familiarity to the sleeping boy that make Riku's muscles tense as if anticipating battle.  
  
Sora kneels in front of Ventus and takes his hands in his. Nobody speaks. Aqua stands protectively over her friend, at least what's left of him. Riku squeezes his eyes closed. He's about to excuse himself, escape into the emptiness outside, but Sora says his name in a whisper that still sounds too loud for this place of mourning.  
  
Fighting his body, Riku walks to his friend. Sora doesn't look up. He's staring at Ventus.  
  
He murmurs, barely audible, "Riku, it's _Roxas_."  
  
Riku crouches to glance at the boy's face, but he needs no confirmation. He knows from experience that you never forget a person you try to kill. No matter how much you want to.  
   
He puts his hand over his mouth, willing himself not to vomit. And then the world is lurching and he feels himself fall away from his body, a sensation that has never become anything other than awful no matter how many sleeping worlds he dived into. For a second everything is stillness and then someone is shaking his shoulders, someone with gloved hands and wild eyes, someone yelling, "He's here! He's here! I saw him, _he's here!_ "  
  
Gulping breaths of empty air, grappling for balance, Riku manages to say, "Calm down, I heard you the first time," before he sinks to his knees, coughing and shivering. He needs a few moments to catch up to the sudden shift of his consciousness from the living to dreaming world.  
  
"Did you just knock me out?"  
  
"I _told_ you you'd be the first to know," huffs Vanitas. His arms are crossed over his chest; he stares at Riku with disdain. Eventually, realising that Riku isn't going to stand up any time soon, he sits down next to him.  
  
"Did you speak to him?"  
  
"No. He was only here for a moment. But he was here. He's in Sora's heart. I know it." Vanitas' voice is quivering with anticipation. With horror. As if a far off dream had suddenly taken a step closer to reallity.  
  
Riku says, "Aqua took us to see Ventus' body. Maybe that's what drew him out." He doesn't say how sickeningly familiar the boy was. His stomach twists remembering Roxas, the Nobody who never quite played the role he was cast in.  
  
The silence loops and loops. Riku feels the tug of consciousness returning, resists. He watches Vanitas. Vanitas stares out into the endless darkness.  
  
Eventually Vanitas whispers, "I don't think I'm ready to exist again." He clutches his head in his hands. His shaky breaths become a long, shallow moan. Daringly, Riku reaches out to pat his shoulder, making him jolt, a familiar glitch that seems to come from other memories of this dreaming realm. This close to him Riku can make out the scent of blood; beneath that, the sickly odour of infection.  
  
"I don't want to fight him again," Vanitas says, his voice the barest groan above a whisper. "But if that's what it takes…"  
  
Riku returns to wakefulness, his head throbbing and his mouth dry.  
  
"Riku!" Sora is by his side, of course, concern filling up his big round eyes. "Are you okay? What happened?"  
  
"I'm fine." The headache only takes a minute to pass over. Time is stable again. "It was Vanitas. Being here must have..." he falters, as if this is even the strangest thing that's happened to them. "You being close to Ventus' body must have woken him up or something."  
  
Riku forces himself to look once again at the room's sleeping occupant. The guilt is bile in his throat. How could he have let himself do so much evil? But he remembers the maddening desperation; the desperation to fix his mistakes, to defeat the enemy, to see Sora's sky-blue eyes flutter open again. The spiral of fear, worse than fear, terror, coiling tighter and tighter. Striking out in blindness. The long, painful, faltering road to redemption.  
  
He thinks he understands why it was him that Vanitas' heart reached out to.  
  


* * *

  
Vanitas is in a better mood - as much as Vanitas can ever be in a good mood, at least. He lays on the familiar stained glass panels, gazing into the abyss above them. Every so often he drums his fingers on the glass.  
  
He says, his voice sounding thoughtful, "We watched you fall to the Darkness." Drumming on the glass - once, twice, a pause, once again. " _I_ watched you. I don't think he ever saw you."  
  
Riku sits with his legs folded, feeling almost as if trying to move his limbs would meet with a syrupy resistance.  
  
"You were so angry," says Vanitas. He scratches the underside of his jaw, where the neck of his suit meets his helmet. "You were so afraid."  
  
Riku swallows. "Yeah," he agrees. As if that small word could sum up all the awful poisonous feelings that swirled inside him.  
  
Vanitas sits up abruptly, moving too quickly, the motion so sudden Riku barely even sees it.  
  
Excitement in his voice now, he says, "But you're not angry any more. You're not afraid either." There's something in his expression Riku hasn't seen before. A new wideness to his eyes. Almost vulnerable. "You're not even afraid of the Darkness."  
  
Riku fiddles with the stitching of his jeans. He says, "Sometimes I'm afraid of it."  
  
"Are you afraid of me?" asks Vanitas, challengingly. Riku finds himself chuckling.  
  
"No, not really."  
  
This displeases the boy. "I could make you fear me." But then his posture seems to slump. He says in a quiet voice, "Maybe he's afraid of me." Vanitas scratches the back of his neck now. His constricting suit seems to bother him. Then he leans back, looks up into the blackness. "No, it's not me he's scared of. It's the fact that I still exist. He's scared of what's gonna happen to him because of me."  
  
Riku says, trying to disguise the uncertainty in his voice, "King Mickey thinks that maybe you'll stay separated. Outside of Sora's heart, I mean." He feels like he's said this to Vanitas before, but the memory is insubstantial. How many times have both of them repeated themselves in this surreal half-existing place?  
  
Vanitas doesn't speak for a long time. Then he says, conversationally, "I left him sometimes. I convinced myself that nothing could be worse than what he did to me. But I always went crawling back." Despite his casual tone his fists are clenched tight; Riku can feel the tension in the air, almost like suffocating. His breaths feel shallow. His lungs pull at the empty air, desperate for oxygen. He wakes up gasping.  
  


* * *

  
"Your magic is improving," says Master Aqua as they sweep clear the training arena. Although her face is a little flush, she's as composed as ever. Riku marvels at how much poise she retains even in combat, how fast she recovers after battle. "You have a good instinct. You should trust it more."  
  
Riku wipes sweat from his forehead. He knows he used to fight more instinctively, but after spending several years fighting his gut letting his body move before his mind is a challenge.  
  
"Thanks," he says. "I'll work on it."  
  
"You're so dedicated to your studies," Aqua comments. She sets aside the broom, stretches on her toes. She's maybe a little taller than Riku, but there's not much in it. "You remind me of myself. Don't forget to take breaks too."  
  
The first time Riku suggested they train together, she had been reluctant. Perhaps it's still only duty that brings her here now. Either way, Riku's glad: he has a lot to learn from her, both her fighting style and experience of Xehanort. Mark of Mastery or no, he feels like he needs all the help he can get.  
  
"I'll try."  
  
"You're so young to have such responsibility," Aqua says. The ever-present sadness glimmers in her eyes. "Yen Sid forgets that you're all still children." She glances away for a moment to regain her composure. "Come. It must be almost lunchtime."  
  
They walk back towards the Castle. Aqua swings her arms back and forth restlessly. Then, unexpectedly, she says, "Are you still dreaming of Vanitas?"  
  
"Every few nights, yeah."  
  
Aqua takes a deep breath, sighs. "It's so strange to imagine that that monster-" she catches herself- "That boy could have been part of Ventus." However briefly she glances at Riku, he catches it. He doesn't find it so hard to understand how good and evil could coexist inside one body: isn't he proof of that? "We had no idea. I didn't even realise until too late that he was even connected to Xehanort."  
  
Riku says tentatively, "It doesn't seem like he gave him much choice." They've stopped walking. A gentle breeze rustles through the trees. So many of them are scarred from the world's descent to darkness, great boughs cleaved and trunks splintered in the turmoil. But what's truly astonishing is the new growth from the blackened wounds, the fresh leaves bright, optimistically splayed to catch the sun.  
  
Aqua doesn't say anything for a while. Then she says, "Ventus hadn't been Xehanort's apprentice for long before he brought him to us. Terra and I… we only met him once before. Twice, perhaps. Xehanort visited occasionally. He and Eraqus were old friends. Although they didn't always see eye to eye." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "Darkness," she whispers. "He was so _young_."  
  
"You don't have to talk about this," Riku reminds her gently. Even he can see how painful the memories are for her. But she dismisses him with a wave.  
  
"No. You have a right to know this. You've inherited this battle, after all." She thinks for a few moments, perhaps choosing her words carefully. "I don't remember much about Ventus before he came to us. He was shy… or cold, perhaps. I remember thinking it was strange for a boy his age to be so guarded."  
  
Riku thinks about Ventus. Roxas. Different people, or just a different name? He hasn't told Master Aqua his fears. He can't bring himself to.  
  
"And after?"  
  
"For a few months he barely spoke at all," says Aqua, her voice taking on a new fondness. "Terra took it upon himself to get him up to speed again. He learned quickly, but he never really remembered more than fragments of his life before." She lets out a small chuckle. Riku's sure it's the first time he's heard her laugh. "Terra doted on Ven day and night. And Ven would run around after him like a chick after a mother hen." Tears prick at her eyes.  
  
"I'm sorry," says Riku. He feels hollow. All he can do is watch Aqua's grief.  
  
"He was always such a sweet boy," Aqua continues, speaking slowly. Forcing the memories into words. "It didn't take long before he was like family to us. No, he was family." She corrects herself again: " _Is_. Even if he's not the same… he's still family. He always will be." She cranes her neck up to the sky, where patches of clouds are gathering a promise of rain.  
  
Riku bites his lip. He imagines saying, " _Vanitas is in a lot of pain. If they're reunited, Ventus will be too_." He imagines saying, " _Ventus was part of the Organisation_." He imagines saying, " _I fought the boy in the Castle. I tried to kill him. I was so desperate to save Sora I was willing to kill_." But in the end his courage fails him, and he just says, "I'm sorry."  
  


* * *

  
Riku reads over the entries in his dream journal yet again. Every conversation fragmented, half remembered through a thick fog made of the crossover between worlds. He flicks back and forth, looking for some kind of pattern to his interactions with Vanitas. The early entries - not the first dreams, it took him a while to start writing them down - are mostly glimpses of the boy, occasional uttered phrases, frequent fights. Recently Vanitas has been more pensive, more interested in talking than chasing Riku out of his dreaming world with his Keyblade. But there are so many gaps. Several entries simply read:  
  
_saw vanitas again. don't remember the rest._  
  
Riku would be lying if he said that the strange boy hasn't been consuming his waking thoughts as well as sleeping ones lately. So much fear and loathing trapped inside the Pandora's box of Sora's heart. Feelings that are all uncomfortably familiar to Riku.  
  
What if Ventus and Vanitas are reunited when they free them from Sora's heart? And… what if they aren't?  
  
Riku realises he's chewing on the inside of his lip. He wills himself to stop the nervous tic. He finds himself saying aloud: "Their pain will be mended, when you return to end it."  
  
One of the earlier entries reads:  
  
_vanitas is angry at me. AGAIN. don't know what I did. called me worthless & an abomination. but maybe he was referring to himself… threatened me with his keyblade. his hands were shaking. why does he keep calling me if he hates the sight of me??_  
  
_so TIRED. haven't had a good night's rest all week._  
  
Riku wonders what Sora thought of all his hatred. But then, Sora never saw the worst of it: those who witnessed the darkest aspects of Riku are all gone now. Was Naminé any less of a tool under Riku's command just because he was working to restore Sora's heart? He wasn't even doing it for the greater good. Just obsession. Empty, aching, mindless obsession.  
  
Another, in barely legible handwriting:  
  
_vanitas was crying, but his tears were like darkness. he kept saying "he promised me the pain would stop". I tried to comfort him but he lashed out. darkness engulfed everything. it felt hot and cold at the same time -- there were so many pairs of red eyes -- I thought I was drowning -- then I was back on the station and he was acting like nothing happened. it was like the first time i fell to darkness. is this what existence feels like for him?_  
  
Riku flicks forward a few pages, mindlessly.  
  
One entry simply says:  
  
_help me._  
  


* * *

  
Riku lays on the now familiar glass panelling, his consciousness only half tethered to the sleeping world. Beside him, Vanitas is humming something so off key it's practically unrecognisable as a tune.  
  
"Where'd you hear that?" Riku asks eventually. He's half aware of his dozing body draped on a bench in the sun. He hopes he wakes up before his skin starts to burn. Although a childhood playing on beaches left him with a healthy tan, his skin is paler than it used to be after several years in the shadows. More sensitive to sunlight.  
  
"Don't remember," says Vanitas. "Maybe it came from Before." He rolls onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow. He watches Riku for a few moments, his scrutiny making Riku's skin prickle. Then he says surprisingly casually, "You know what it's like to have all the happiness ripped out of you."  
  
Memories choke up in Riku's throat. He remembers seeing Sora's new friends, watching him leave with them like Riku had never mattered. That sickening tangle of betrayal and insecurity in his gut like poison. "Yeah," he manages to say.  
  
Vanitas rolls onto his back again. He summons his Keyblade, holding it up to inspect it under the directionless light. The crimson accents on the cruel metal glimmer like blood, the chains clinking as Vanitas twists his weapon this way and that. Riku recognises the blue catlike eyes on the flat of the blade. They seem to watch him eerily.  
  
"Pitiful creature," says Vanitas in a faraway voice. "The Keyblade was never yours to wield." He traces his fingers over the Keyblade as if seeing its interlocking gears for the first time. Looks at Riku again. "But you earned it."  
  
"Yeah," murmurs Riku.  
  
"You went back to the light," says Vanitas. "And the light accepted you."  
  
Riku thinks about the torturous, faltering road on the way to dawn. The darkness still inside of him. "Not exactly," he says. "I still have one foot in the darkness. I'm just…" He considers what little he knows about Vanitas from Aqua and King Mickey. About the things Vanitas tells him whenever he's in an aquiescent mood. He chooses his next words carefully: "I'm just not letting it define me any more."  
  
Vanitas watches him for a long time. Riku flitters in and out of wakefulness. For a moment he almost returns to Radiant Garden, the bright sunlight making him squint, the colours washed out of the world around him as his eyes adjust - but Vanitas pulls him back into sleep again, his hands clenched hard around Riku's arm, a bloody metallic tang replacing the sweet smell of grass and flowers. The boy's face is close. His eyes are rimmed with exhaustion. Riku can make out the faint mark of a bruise on his lip. His black hair matted from lack of care. The dream suddenly feels too real, as if it was Riku who had pulled Vanitas into the waking world. Details Riku had never noticed before suddenly resolving into clarity. The boy's laboured breath loud in the empty, airless space. Smelling of decay.  
  
"You saved yourself," Vanitas hisses urgently, his words coming out in a tumble as if he knows he doesn't have much time. He repeats himself, louder: " _You saved yourself_."  
  
Riku says out loud the thing Vanitas has always been too afraid to admit: "You want me to save you too." Vanitas' fingers dig into his skin, his arms visibly shaking. The scent of stale sweat and neglected infection is cloying; even breathing shallowly isn't enough to stop Riku from tasting it in his mouth. He reaches out to touch Vanitas' arm; his fingers come away sticky. Blood. Worse than blood: rot. Vanitas falling apart as the dream collapses around them. The darkness rising from the lead between the glass panes, coagulating into malaevolent forms that twist and meld unnaturally.  
  
" _Please-_ "  
  
Riku jolts awake into the light. For a moment, it blinds him. His upper arm smarts, prickles of blood forming where the skin has broken. He closes his eyes and lays back, tipping his head up to the sun. He thinks about the delicate trust between them. Vanitas always so taut like a bow string, so close to snapping. He wonders how the boy would react to learning about Roxas. What Riku did to him.  
  
He pulls out his dream journal, flips to the back page, writes the seven names it will take to summon the two pieces of Ventus' heart from Sora's. One last act of atonement. He snaps the book shut. Kairi first. He'll face the rest of his guilt as it comes.  
  


* * *

  
"- and he pulls one of the dead Keyblades out - he smashes it down on my arm like this -" The glass shatters in almost syrupy slow motion as Vanitas drives the teeth of his Keyblade into it. "Ugh. You weren't supposed to move." He wrenches Void Gear free, sending splinters of glass skidding across the station.  
  
"I'm not letting you stab me!" Riku exclaims, still startled by the inhuman speed at which Vanitas is capable of moving.  
  
"Why not? This isn't even your real body." Vanitas flicks his Keyblade away. He kneels by the gash in the floor, prising up more pieces of glass and tossing them off the edge into the endless nothing. The light beneath is bright enough to leave shards in Riku's vision. "Nothing here lasts." He sounds disappointed.  
  
"It still hurts."  
  
"So what?"  
  
Riku rolls his eyes. "Might surprise you to learn that most people prefer to avoid pain when they can." Vanitas rolls his eyes, muttering something like "pathetic".  
  
Neither of them speak for a little while. Riku thinks about the Princesses. The countdown to Ventus' resurrection. Part of him feels good to have a concrete goal that isn't the looming spectre of Xehanort's war, but he fears those sky blue eyes opening and recognising him. Making him account for everything he did. He still hasn't told Vanitas. Can't bring himself to.  
  
Vanitas says, "At least it wasn't my right arm. He always made sure I could still fight." He subconsciously rubs his left forearm, as if remembering the pain Xehanort so calculatedly inflicted on him. His gaze fixes on Riku again. Serious. Thoughtful.  
  
"Whether you and Ventus are reunited or not, I won't let him hurt you again."  
  
To Riku's surprise, Vanitas laughs, the noise still abrupt and jarring.  
  
"That's like the fifth time you've said that."  
  
"I must mean it then."  
  
Vanitas rests his head on his knees. It only takes a few moments before he mutters something under his breath and begins to scrabble at the base of his neck. "I hate this fucking thing." He pulls off his helmet, revealing a slender jawline and a tangled matt of hair where the metal presses close to his head. Riku can almost make out the faint mottling of old sores along his cheeks. "Hate this fucking suit too. Hate these fucking boots. Hate this fucking Keyblade." He knocks the helmet against his leg repetitively, almost compulsively, deep in thought. Then he says, "Maybe we won't remember anything. He didn't even know who he was." He whispers: "Maybe that's better." Tipping his head back. Fingers curling around loose shards of glass, shards that will melt back into the stained glass window by the time Riku returns.  
  


* * *

  
Kairi wields the Keyblade of Heart with the poise and self assuredness of royalty. Complete, it shines with a light that Riku could never have drawn from it, a light almost blinding, turning the silhouette of the black metal hazy. The last few months of intensive training have brought a new definition to her arms. Her dedication rivals Riku's: making up for lost time, perhaps.  
  
"Ready?" she asks. Sora bites his lip. Squares his shoulders. Riku feels a pang of deja vu, so intense he can almost feel that unnatural rubbery flesh enclosing him, Ansem's consciousness engulfing his own. The smell of disturbed dust in the air, the aching emptiness of that forgotten place.  
  
Sora, always so willing to rip himself apart for others.  
  
"Ready."  
  
Riku closes his eyes, turns away. The light leaves an afterimage on the back of his eyelids. He forces himself to turn back, to witness Kairi raise the Keyblade of Heart, holding Sora's shoulder to steady herself. The moment holds a strange intimacy, both of them finding strength in each other's eyes. A flash of light as the blade enters his chest, slow to fade.  
  
A rush of self-loathing fills Riku. None of this would have happened without him. He stole the Princesses and ripped their power from them, one by one. He led Sora on a reckless chase, always keeping him one step behind, making sure the Keyblade never came close enough to save his targets. He dared not admit it, but he never wanted Kairi's heart to return to her body. If he would suffer, so would she, so would Sora, so would everyone in those dying worlds. The light of the stars, so far away, winking out in the darkness.  
  
Seeing Sora stumble is agonising, the bright light of the heart he incubated for so long - the heart Riku tried to extinguish - throwing the room into painful contrast. It takes a few moments for Riku's vision to return. Blurry with the beginning of tears. Sora is standing, though barely - he leans heavily on Kairi, breathing harshly while she rubs a soothing hand against his chest. She leads him gently to the wall, helps him sit, all the while murmuring words of comfort to him that Riku can barely make out.  
  
Across the room, Ventus groans, lifting a hand support his head. Aqua is ready at the boy's side. Ventus looks up, confusion in his expression mixed with something searching, desperate. Those painfully blue eyes, so reminiscent of Sora's. They focus not on Aqua, not on Riku, but Kairi.  
  
He croaks out: "Xion?"  
  
Riku's blood is ice. He wants to run, run like he did for so long from the consequences of his actions.  
  
Aqua takes her friend's cheeks in her hands. "Ventus," she whispers urgently, "Ventus, it's me, Aqua. Do you remember me?" Ventus is silent for a few moments. If there's recognition in his face, Riku isn't close enough to see it. He lets out another low moan, his eyes fluttering downwards. Then suddenly his focus turns to Riku. Piercing, wild, golden.  
  
Riku takes a tentative step forwards. Time seems frozen. Ventus - Vanitas - both of them - stare helplessly. Almost unseeing. Then from their mouth comes a keening wail, muted at first but quickly raising to a high scream that seems to come from two mouths, not one. They shake as though possessed, fighting Aqua's grip, their cries breaking up into strangled sobs.  
  
"King Mickey was right," Riku says breathlessly. "They've been apart for too long. They can't coexist again." He can taste the tang of putrefaction on his tongue. "What happens now… it's up to them."  
  


* * *

  
It's strange to see Vanitas so still, his eyelashes casting shadows on his hollow cheeks, his bandage-swaddled chest rising and falling evenly. In the bright strip lights of the medical ward he looks even more washed out than usual, almost as pale as the linen surrounding him. The air is thick with the bitter tang of potions, disinfectant and iodine, but at least it masks the smell of infection.  
  
Sora drops by, carrying a bag of clothes.  
  
"These should fit him," he says, dropping the bag by the bed. "He's…kind of my size."  
  
"More your size than mine," intones Riku, making Sora chuckle. Although at what he's not really sure.  
  
"I think I've got more clothes at home I can pick up next time I visit," says Sora. He gestures to the other chair at Vanitas' bedside. "Can I?"  
  
"Sure. He's been asleep for a couple hours." At first he watched the boy with tense nerves, half expecting him to jump up at any moment and start screaming again, but now Riku's wondering if he's going to wake up before morning at all.  
  
"It's so weird seeing my face like that," Sora murmurs after a few minutes. A sudden memory jolts Riku: he's all too familiar with the horror of seeing your own face reflected back at you from another body. Riku wonders what happened to that replica. Another shadow, another fragment of a person tossed around like a tool. Riku's stomach clenches uncomfortably at the thought that someone with his face, his memories, might still be wandering around. Partly because it feels like theft, partly because wanting to eliminate the replica feels like murder.  
  
He does his best not to let his mind dwell on thoughts like that.  
  
"Yeah," he agrees finally, keeping his voice even. "It's pretty weird even for me."  
  
In the weeks it took to collect every fragment of power for the Keyblade of Hearts, Riku had found himself frequently of what it would be like to meet Vanitas for the first time. His expectations ranged from clashing Keyblades to a wordless, bittersweet moment of understanding shared between them as Vanitas woke from his decade long slumber. What had actually happened was a brief but violent tussle as Riku wrestled a delirious Vanitas away from his counterpart and onto the floor where the altercation was abruptly ended by a well-aimed sleepga from Kairi. Vanitas woke once more on the way to the medical wing, but thankfully he was too dazed to resist and succumbed quickly to the sedatives the doctor Even hastily prepared for his new patient.  
  
A patient he had taken one horrified look at, obviously struggling to breathe through the cloying stench of infected wounds, and barked: "Ienzo. Fluids. Antibiotics. _Now_."  
  
So actually Riku's fateful reunion with Vanitas had turned into a crash course on treating septis and a rather harder lesson in keeping the contents of his stomach down while washing and dressing what felt like a never ending series of long-neglected injuries.  
  
"I talked to Ventus," says Sora. "He asked if I knew where Xion was. Aqua doesn't know the name, so it must have been from when he was Roxas. Do you remember a Xion?"  
  
Riku can only shake his head. "The name sounds familiar, but I can't place it."  
  
"Yeah, me too. Maybe Lea will know." Sora brushes Vanitas' fringe of hair away from his face, looking at him with empathetic eyes. "Ventus doesn't remember much from when he was in my heart, so Vanitas might not either. But if you got through to him once, you can do it again, right?" Spoken with Sora's usual cheerful optimism. Riku isn't so sure. He just remembers the desperation, the fear.  
  
"Think I'll start with a bath and a hot meal and see where we go from there."  
  
Sora laughs. "Practical as always."  
  
At dusk he brings Riku a drink and a plate of barbecued fish over a generous heap of rice. The salad on the side looking like an afterthought. "Cid's cooking out on the square. Let me know if you want more." Vanitas' eyes flutter open briefly, but all he does is grumble something unintelligible and scratch at one of the bandages on his chest before sleep pulls him back under again. He looks almost peaceful.  
  


* * *

  
In the dream, despite the empty darkness surrounding him, Riku can smell the familiar tang of sea air, almost able to make out the call of gulls at the edges of his hearing. He takes his time crossing the glass. Under his feet the things that matter to him the most: the islands, the open sky, the King, Kairi, Sora. Vanitas is sitting by Riku's sleeping image, chin resting idly on one hand, tracing the lines of lead between the panes of glass with his finger.  
  
"Now you can talk to me while I'm awake you can't keep bugging me in my dreams too."  
  
Vanitas glances up. Those intense golden eyes. Neither amused nor angry. Something more serious in his expression.  
  
"So this is it, huh."  
  
"Ready?"  
  
Vanitas laughs. "No."  
  
Riku risks placing his hand over Vanitas'. To his surprise the other boy doesn't flinch. "You don't have to do this alone," he says. "I'll be right here. That's a promise."  
  
The stillness stretches out, timeless, Vanitas' breaths steady and even, the cadence of his heart drawn out into long, slow beats. That face so like Sora's, yet so unlike him. Riku wakes slowly, feeling groggy, his neck stiff from falling asleep in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Outside a steady rain falls, sweeping against the window in rhythmic waves. In the next room Riku can hear voices: Even talking to one of Radiant Garden's residents. Vanitas still asleep on the hospital bed, curled up on his side. His hand curled loosely around Riku's. Gently, so as not to wake him, Riku gives Vanitas' hand a squeeze.  
  
"I'll be right here," he murmurs to the sleeping boy. "That's a promise."


End file.
